Other reviews have focused on the music, but this film is not really about guys in funny clothes with ribbons speaking French and playing cellos with 7 strings instead of 4. It is a meditation on two opposite forms of male egotism: the older genius who is too good for the world and everyone in it and the younger opportunist who will use anyone and anything including his own talent to get ahead. They meet, mesh, clash, and part over music for the viol (viola da gamba), not incidentally leaving the older man's daughter pregnant, ill, and ultimately a suicide. The story is narrated by the opportunist now old himself as a confession, to a room full of his sycophantic music students at the court of Louis XIV (the character, Marin Marais was an actual composer of the time, as was the older man, M. de Sainte Colombe). No other film since Bergman's best seduces you into such hypnotized concentration or breaks your heart with such economy of action.
Review of Tous les matins du monde
